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Spring garden maintenance complete and front boulevard planted

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I’d like to thank everyone who stopped by to express their condolences on the loss of Chris’ cousin who was a very good friend of ours. I was supposed to be in another city and attending the visitations today, but I got really sick yesterday and our car broke down. So I’m home tonight … Chris can’t even drive back to pick me up as our car hasn’t been repaired yet. You can read a more detailed explanation of what happened on my main blog if you’d like.

So on to garden related stuff …

Last week, in preparation for Green Thumb Sunday, I went out into my yard and took pictures of most of the plants that were either coming up or that were blooming.

The garden looks very nice this year. Chris and I spent two days last weekend cleaning up the garden – trimming plants, getting rid of dead foliage, pruning roses and putting some compost that we picked up at a local park on Saturday thanks to Toronto’s Earth days’. (That’s a green recycling program where the city gives back the compost from the green garbage and other yard related wastes it’s picked up the year prior).

Needless to say my back took a beating and ached for a few days after I over did it in the garden. The effort payed off though as we had cooler temperatures and some rain last week and that really perked up the garden. Since the beds were tidier I could really see how my plants were progressing.

IMG_3325 Now you might remember a post I made about a month ago. It was the one where I showed photos of our front yard still covered in snow and photos of our planted boulevard that I had spent the day cleaning up.

Well the front boulevard looks even nicer now! I planted some peonies that I’d purchased in early April as well as some Dahlias, Gay Feather and a few other plants to go along with the plants that have been growing there for a few years (iris, daylilies, malva, salvia, tulips) and we placed our short bamboo fence in front of it to finish off the look and protect the garden from the teens that like to stand outside my house talking before they go their separate ways after school.

This is what it looks like now:

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and from another angle:

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Just to give you a complete picture of how the front garden looks I’ll throw in a photo of the front flower beds too:

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Now most of my plants are in the backyard. In a day or two I’ll post some photos of how the backyard garden looks right now and maybe a few photos of what’s blooming.

I hope your gardens are doing well right now!






Terra Firma Landscape and Design servicing North Texas

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Normally when I write a post on this blog I discuss my garden, the types of plants I grow, plant profiles and garden maintenance tips. Usually when I write I discuss topics as though I’m talking to fellow gardeners. However, I realize that not everyone who visits this site has already created a garden. Some of you might have just purchased a home, and or are beginning to think about landscaping your property.

I also realize that not everyone wants to get their hands dirty! Perhaps you’re interested in having a beautifully landscaped property that’s maintained regularly by a landscaping company?

Well, if you live in the North Texas area and you’re interested in having your property landscaped or maintained you might be interested in contacting Terra Firma Landscaping & Design for a free quote.

Terra Firma Landscaping and Design offers services such as maintenance, lawn renovation, landscaping and complete property or garden design. The company is run by three design experts who’ve come together to combine their 15 years of experience in lawn maintenance and landscaping design.

If you’re interested in having Terra Firma landscape your property you’ll be happy to know that they are interested in finding out what you want in a design, how you want it to function and what kinds of plants or colors interest you. They discuss all aspects of design with their clients prior to starting a project and if the client is interested they’ll maintain the garden, change flower colors with the four seasons and so on.

I found the website very easy to navigate. Whether you are just visiting to check out what services they offer, to get a free quote or to learn more about the company and the projects they’ve completed in the past most of the information is only a click away.

The site has plenty of photographs on each page to compliment the topic being discussed in each article. The photos are lovely and of good quality. The site has also been designed with what I find to be pleasant colors with a background of white in the content areas and a pleasing green for the sidebars and navigational menu.

The only real complaint I have about the site is that it’s too wide. My laptop has a widescreen and I find that the pages come up off center forcing me to scroll sideways to center the text of the article. This is probably because a background image is too large and while irritating I’m sure it can easily be fixed.

One of the site features that I liked best was the blog. I’ve already got a garden and it’s not likely that I’ll be contacting anyone in the near future about landscaping or design. However, I’m still interested in learning about what the latest gardening trends are, or how to resolve various gardening or plant related issues and that’s where the blog comes in handy.

On the blog you’ll find posts that appear to be questions that some of their clients might have asked such as Why does my Crape Myrtle look like it was set on fire?, and posts about the type of landscaping that’s done by builders, featured easy care low maintenance plants and so on.

I’m sure many of my readers could find a helpful post on the Terra Firma Landscaping and Design blog.

Overall I think that a home or business owner who is interested in having their property maintained or landscaped would find this website very helpful.

However, besides the site being too wide there are a couple of things that could be improved. There are client testimonials on the site and I’m certain that many of their lovely photographs are of projects they’ve completed, yet there isn’t a specific section that discusses past projects or shows before and after photographs. I’d love to see that on this site as there’s no better way to demonstrate your skills than by showing before and after pictures.

The only other area of the site that might be improved is the plant directory. You can reach it by clicking the Plant Directory link at the bottom right of each page.

There are two columns of plant names. Site visitors can hover over a plant name and a picture of the plant appears to the right. Below the plants photo is the name of the plant and what appears to be a link that says click here to learn more. However I haven’t found a link that’s clickable. Another problem is that when you hover over a plant name in the left most column you can’t move your mouse across the page to the right side where the photo of the plant is located because as you hover over any other plant name the photo changes. I think it would be better if the plant names in each of the columns were clickable and once clicked the photo of the plant would appear.

I’ve been viewing the site using my Firefox browser. I decided I’d better take a look at it with my Internet Explorer 7 just to see if the problems I’d pointed out on the site only affected one browser type, but I see them in IE as well.

Overall I think this website is appealing and contains enough information to interest potential clients and gardeners alike, however there are a few functional issues that need to be addressed to improve the visitors experience.

Take a look at Terra Firma Landscaping and Design if you’re in North Texas and are in need of landscaping, design or maintenance services.

Hens and Chicks in the garden

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When we first moved into our house it had a garden, but not a great garden. It had a lot of weedy plants that spread throughout the garden and even into the grass. I can’t remember the name of this simple green leafed plant, but it was everywhere and it’s notoriously invasive.

Other than the weedy plant that took about four years to completely get rid of, there were mainly veggies, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, lilies and what appeared to be a fairly young apple tree and pear tree – planted in the middle of the yard!

I know I’ve got a few pictures of what the garden looked like before we started landscaping, but I think they’re on my other computer. Anyway … you can probably picture it. It was pathetic!

At the front of the house, beside our very narrow driveway there’s a very small garden bed. This was filled with hens and chicks. They were straggly as they were trying to grow in a very shady area.

When I was planting new plants in my newly created raised garden beds in the spring of 2002 I moved most of the hens and chicks to the back garden beds. As you can see from the photo above they are thriving in the sunny backyard. Click on the photo for a larger view if you’d like – the larger photo is quite nice.

The Hens and Chicks (Sempervivum), particularly in this especially sunny area have spread out and grown into the crevices of the interlocking stones. They look lovely … even better after I’ve picked out the dead leaves and mulch that get stuck in them over winter!

As for that very shady garden bed? Once I removed the hens and chicks I planted shade loving plants like Bleeding heart, lily of the valley, a fern, hosta and in a less shady area a Stella D’ora daylily, plus a few other plants.

Actually, I spent some time today adding new plants to that small flower bed and later today I’ll be planting more plants (that I purchased two weeks ago!) in the front boulevard. I’ll tell you what I planted in a new post once I’m finished the job. Hopefully I’ll have a few photos too.

In the meantime … if you want to see an older picture of what my back yard garden looked like in July of 2003 – one year after most of the plants had been added to the garden, here you go:

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The garden has matured quite a bit since that time and I’ve managed to add more plants! Oh and I’ve moved a few around too. So it looks similar … but different … better maybe.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

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